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A good number of indie books and an X-Title back on the ol’ pull list. Who’da thunk it?!?!?! Here’s this week’s noteworthy titles.

DAREDEVIL #5 – Back issues of Mark Waid’s Daredevil title has been REALLY hard to find, presumably because of how damn good everyone is saying it is.

FF #11

GLADSTONES SCHOOL FOR WORLD CONQUERORS #6 – One of the few titles I’m allowing myself to pick up new, and I can’t find issue #5 ANYWWHERE! Damn!

GODZILLA KINGDOM OF MONSTERS #8 – While I’m still digging this book, I wish there were more clear-cut story arcs. As it is, each issue just adds on to the events without any clear goal in mind. Maybe IDW just wants to tell The Walking Dead with kaiju?

RED WING #4 (OF 4)

SECRET AVENGERS #18

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES ONGOING #3 – A surprisingly good reboot of the Turtles’ continuity, I’m enjoying this one a lot. Worth picking up for some old-school comic storytelling.

VENOM #8

WOLVERINE AND X-MEN #1 – Jason Aaron gets his own X-Title coming out of Schism, and even though I more or less figured I’d never be able to wrap my head around X-continuity again, I’m going to give it a shot.

A pretty light week for me this time around, and to be honest, not one I’m exceptionally fired up for. This week sees a huge batch of DC #2 issues, and in a rare display of good planning, the release of all the first issue reprints for this week’s titles.

AXE COP BAD GUY EARTH TP – If you missed out on the Dark Horse mini series (all original material, not reprints from the webcomic) do yourself a favor and pick up this little burst of insanity. I snagged the mini when it came out and may still pick this up for the extra material.

HULK #42 – Jeff Parker’s Hulk has been a revelation. You should be reading this, especially if you like giant monsters hitting each other (which I do).

INFINITE #3

ROGER LANGRIDGES SNARKED #1 – I was very surprised that I didn’t love the Snarked zero issue, but I’ve been pleased with Langridge’s work so far to give a full issue a shot.

SUPERIOR #5 (OF 6) – Mark Millar Presents Mark Millar’s Captain Marvel returns after a long absence…So long that I forgot it hadn’t been finished yet. Still, it’s a decent enough title to keep picking up, even if it sounds like I’m damning it with faint praise.

THUNDERBOLTS #164

X-MEN SCHISM #5 (OF 5) – I was up in the air about this one until I read Chris Sims’ review, which reaffirmed my Jason Aaron love.

That’s it for this week. My pull list has been updated and the back issue search continues. What are YOU looking at?

Man, it has been a long, LONG time since I’ve done a link round-up, and I have so many browser tabs open these days it’s crashing my computer. So, in the spirit of enlightened self-interest, please help me get caught up.

And speaking of killing comic characters, around the time of Marvel’s dubious “success” killing off Johnny Storm, Bleeding cool posted this article on Marvel’s plan to kill a character every 3 months. Way to convince me that the stories are organic and remind me why I’m so down on the industry lately guys.

Speaking of Marvel’s corporate strategy, BC also reported on their look at their characters as brands. Which makes sense. See also: my post on continuity and canon. I think it’s happening.

After what must have been a huge success with G.I. Joe, IDW is going to continue Marvel’s Transformers series where it left off years ago. The Furman/Wildman issues were the best of that entire run; I’m REALLY looking forward to this. I just hope Wildman uses his style from then and not the current movie-esque complexity.

There are so many Wolverine mini-series these days — in addition to his main titles and spinoffs — that I tend to just miss them as fluff out of hand. I’ve read my fair share of unnecessary Logan stories already, so the character alone isn’t enough to sell me on any of his titles at this point. A couple weeks ago I stumbled across one of these minis in the discount bin but one credit on the cover caught my eye: Jason Aaron. The book was Wolverine: Manifest Destiny and — not to ruin the end of the review — it was amazing.

Jason Aaron is something of a comic book mash-up artist, taking what he loves from other media and incorporating it into his comics. Ghost Rider was heavily influenced by the Satansploitation grindhouse flicks, Scalped draws from The Departed, and Manifest Destiny is Wolverine meets The Last Dragon. Set just after he regains his memories and the X-Men move to San Francisco, we find Logan remembering an old wrong and returning to Chinatown to correct the problem he caused after killing the local warlord and not stepping up to fill in the power vacuum.

“Wolverine in Chinatown” probably would have been enough of an elevator pitch to make the book good, but Aaron really sells it. He throws in new gangs, any one of which you’d want to read a mini-series about, new villains (ever want to see Wolverine get punched in the soul?), and a villain whose motivation and connection to Logan make perfect sense.

I wouldn’t do this book justice if I didn’t heap some praise on artist Stephen Segovia as well. It’s rare that I’m surprised by an artist I’m reading for the first time, because I prefer to think I’ve already heard of any penciller in comics already putting out great work. However, Segovia knocked me out with his Leneil Yu-inspired draftsmanship and Simone Bianchi-style panel layouts. Especially with panel design, overly-creative attempts can easily become disruptive, but here they contribute to the style of the artwork while still making the flow of reading easy.

To some extent we’ve everything in this mini before: an ex-girlfriend, a mysterious past, a new direction for our hero. But if you take out all of the bad stories we’ve read with those elements, with Manifest Destiny it’s like reading it all for the first time.

My only real quibble with this book comes on the very last page. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s just Aaron setting the stage for more stories in Chinatown. My concern is I’m afraid we won’t get to see what happens next. With a Wolverine title this good, it would be a shame for this stand-out to stay buried with the other minis in your comic shop’s discount bins.

And we’re back with this week’s look at comics that won’t be bought for 4 months! Here’s what’s noteworthy this week.

AVENGERS & INFINITY GAUNTLET GN TP – I loved loved loved this series when it came out last year, and I highly recommend it. Still, I’m curious what (if any) extra material is going to turn $12 worth of comics into a $15 TPB.

BATMAN #707

DAREDEVIL REBORN #2 (OF 4)

INFESTATION #1 (OF 2) – I must say, I’m pretty impressed by the guts IDW is showing by doing a crossover among licensed characters. (And why hasn’t the Enterprise ever gone to Cybertron? MORE CROSSOVERS!!!)

KILL SHAKESPEARE #1 100 PENNY PRESS ED – Because I’m cheap and can pick it up this week I’ll give it a shot.

MAGNUS ROBOT FIGHTER #3 (OF 4) – After reading the first issue, this has mercifully turned into a mini.

SHIELD #6 – And here’s where the story of Howard Stark, Nathaniel Richards, and Galileo wraps up. I don’t know if I would consider this a great series, but kudos to Hickman and Marvel for trying something new.

THUNDERBOLTS #153 – Parker’s best book these days. And maybe one of Marvel’s.

WOLVERINE #6 – Expect an ode to Jason Aaron’s Wolverine soon, as I take a look at his Manifest Destiny mini.

Last week’s 27 #3 has effectively killed off whatever remaining interest I may have had in this series. I’ll snag the fourth and final issue next month, but if it went any further I would drop it now. The faux-Morrison pastiche reads like Charles Soule wanted to take a run at The Invisibles. Atomic Robo continues to impress, though, as Robo starts to grow up. And kiss girls.

These titles get added to the ongoing pull list. That’s it for me. What are YOU looking at?